


D.P.O.

by scullywolf



Series: TXF: Scenes in Between [52]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, MSR, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 17:17:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4795766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf





	D.P.O.

_“At least let’s go see where Jack Hammond was killed. Maybe we’ll find something we both can agree on.”  
_

She nodded. “Okay. Just give me a minute to change and wrap things up in there.”

“I’ll be in the car,” he said with a smile before turning to leave.

He probably should have told Scully about the weather research center, but it hadn’t seemed relevant to this most recent death. Jack Hammond died nearly ten miles away from the facility. Add to that the fact that he didn’t have any contact or entrance burns on his body, and it should have been a non-issue. Still, he hadn’t meant for her to look like an idiot in front of the sheriff.

It had probably _also_ been a dick move to keep his mouth shut when she was being repeatedly challenged by the coroner and the sheriff, though he hadn’t been lying when he’d said she was doing fine. He also hadn’t wanted to make her look weak by jumping in; she was absolutely more than capable of holding her own, and the way the sheriff had looked immediately to him upon walking into the room had annoyed him. He didn’t want to give the man the satisfaction of being able to cast Scully aside or ignore her.

So maybe it had backfired a little bit. He would apologize for that later. Probably.

He sat in the car, waiting for her, looking around at the surrounding area. (He’d always pictured Oklahoma to be a lot flatter.) In all honesty, he really did not know what was going on with these deaths. He didn’t have the most solid of connections between them and the others in his file cabinet back in Washington. (He _may_ have exaggerated their similarities to Scully, but only because he thought they both really needed this case, after everything they’d been through.)

She came out the front door a few minutes later, striding across the parking lot with a scowl on her face. He looked at her, eyebrows raised, when she sat down in the car.

“The coroner doesn’t want to grant us access to the body after today,” she said. “If any questions come up in our investigation, we may be stuck with only the existing report for reference.”

Mulder shrugged. “Hopefully we won’t need the body. There didn’t seem to be anything more to learn from it, did there?”

“You never know, Mulder. That’s the point.” She buckled her seat belt, shaking her head. “You know, I am so tired of local law enforcement treating us like the enemy. Everyone’s so worried about saving face and getting overshadowed by the Bureau. Hell, they can have all the glory they want, as long as the case gets solved in the end. We don’t need it.”

He chuckled. “I’ve been saying that for years.”

She was quiet while he started the car and headed toward the crime scene, pulling the case file out of her briefcase and reading through it again.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” she said eventually. “If lightning hit Hammond’s car, he should have been insulated well enough to avoid a fatal electrocution.”

“It’s a pretty strong charge, Scully,” he said, head tilted to one side. “Also, it’s actually a myth that a car’s rubber tires will insulate you from a lightning strike. More accurately, the car’s metal frame directs the current around you to the ground, but if you’re touching, say, the door handle or steering wheel, you’re absolutely at risk for electrocution.”

“Okay, but there wasn’t a single burn mark on his hands or feet or… or anywhere! It’s like we saw with the… what was it, the uh--?”

“Augustus Cole?” he offered, already fairly certain where she was going with this.

“Yes! The Augustus Cole case. Hammond had all the secondary symptoms, but none of the primary symptoms, of a lightning strike.” She turned to look at him. “Mulder, you don’t think--”

“Another military experiment?” He shook his head. “It’s possible, but I don’t think it fits, not this time. We haven’t found any connection between the victims, aside from their gender and age range. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one, or that this isn’t still some sort of serial incident, but my gut says this isn’t the same as the situation with Cole.”

“But if it’s serial, then that suggests there’s a person behind these attacks. How can someone kill and make it look like lightning?”

He shrugged and pulled into the strip mall where Hammond’s car was parked. “I’m not sure. Hopefully once we get a look at the car, we’ll have some more answers.”  


As for that apology he owed her, well, he supposed that would have to wait.


End file.
